(Adnkronos) – At the origin of the migrant raids in Los Angeles, which have sparked protests in the Californian metropolis and now in many other American cities, there is a clear change of strategy imposed by the White House, unhappy with the numbers of migrants arrested and deported from January to today, which are still considered too low. The Wall Street Journal writes this today, recalling the real scolding that the leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the feared ICE, received at the end of May from Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s advisor and the main architect of his anti-migrant policy, demanding that the number of arrests be increased.
“Go around and arrest illegal aliens,” Miller told ICE officials, urging them not to waste time preparing lists of migrants to search for and arrest, but instead to go to places – especially shopping mall parking lots – where it is known that migrants who offer to work by the day gather. According to the conservative newspaper’s sources, Miller also bet that if he went with a couple of agents on the streets of Washington, he would arrest 30 migrants immediately. “Who thinks they can do it?” he also allegedly asked.
In short, a change of strategy by the White House, which until now had emphasized above all the arrest and deportation of alleged criminals and gang members, those whom Trump has called “the worst of the worst.” But, Miller reminded ICE leaders, the president has promised to deport millions of immigrants, regardless of their criminal record, without documents.
With the raids by agents in military uniform that began last Friday in Los Angeles in the predominantly Hispanic neighborhood of Westlake, ICE therefore seems to have obeyed Miller’s orders, with the raids then provoking protests over the weekend, and the subsequent mobilization by Trump of 2,000 members of the National Guard, a move against which Governor Gavin Newsom has appealed. Although there are no written orders to ICE agents, the American newspaper’s sources explain that they were told to “do whatever they have to do” to increase the number of arrests.
